The old “human right” switcheroo:
When Roger Severino tells his story, discrimination is at its heart.
“I did experience discrimination as a child. And that leaves a lasting impression,” he tells me.
Severino directs the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When I meet with him at his office in the shadow of the Capitol, he talks about his childhood as the son of Colombian immigrants growing up in Los Angeles.
“I remember a white kid coming up, as I was in the pool, [who] said a racial epithet,” Severino recalls. “My response as a kid was — I was confused, in a way. Why would they say such a thing?”
In high school he was steered toward vocational training but he said no thank you, honors classes for me, and on he went to Harvard Law.
But now he’s using civil rights talk as a screen for imposing conservative Catholic dogma on all of us.
Severino — a devout Catholic and political conservative — has put the right to religious freedom front and center in his fight against discrimination in health care.
In public appearances he refers to religious freedom as “the first freedom.” Since coming to HHS he has issued a rule that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control as part of their employee health insurance plans, if employers have a religious or moral objection to contraception.
Rights can be in tension with each other, of course. Rights to equal treatment are in tension with “rights” to treat people unequally. That’s what’s going on here: Severino wants to create and protect a “right” to deny people medical treatment on religious grounds.
And earlier this year he created an entirely new division within the civil rights office — the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom. Its mission, he says, is to ensure that health care workers and health care companies, are never forced to participate in particular medical services — such as abortion, assisted suicide or gender reassignment surgery — if they object.
…
Just a few weeks after he started at HHS, Severino met with representatives from several different advocacy groups — including Judith Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
She says Severino billed the meeting with about 20 people as a “listening session.”
“He opened the meeting telling us his heartfelt story about knowing and understanding discrimination,” she says. “And, frankly, stories will get you just so far.”
Because he was “listening,” Lichtman says, Severino declined to answer questions about his own positions on specific issues. But she believes his actions since then — including creating the religious freedom office — point to a desire to limit women’s access to reproductive health services.
“Abortion is a legal health care service in this country,” Lichtman says. “And if, indeed, what Mr. Severino is intending to do is to undermine protections for women who are seeking a legal health care service, I’d say that’s pretty abhorrent.”
Well, maybe abortion won’t be a legal health care service for much longer. Problem solved?
